Was this what he had expected hazard might bring to him?—­was this the prophecy of his hammering pulses?

“Please hurry before people come out,” she added, and entered the brougham.

“I can’t do this,” he muttered.

“I’ve sent away my maid,” she said.  “Nobody has noticed; those are servants out there.  Will you please come before anybody arriving or departing does notice?”

And, as he did not move:  “Are you going to make me conspicuous by this humiliation before servants?”

He said something between his set teeth and entered the brougham.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” he demanded harshly.

“Yes; nothing yet.  But you would have done enough to stir this borough if you had delayed another second.”

“Your maid saw—­”

“My maid is my maid.”

He leaned back in his corner, gray eyes narrowing.

“Naturally,” he said, “you are the one to be considered, not the man in the case.”

“Thank you. Are you the man in the case?”

“There is no case,” he said coolly.

“Then why worry about me?”

He folded his arms, sullenly at bay; yet had no premonition of what to expect from her.

“You were very brutal to me,” she said at length.

“I know it; and I did not intend to be.  The words came.”

“You had me at your mercy; and showed me little—­a very little at first.  Afterward, none.”

“The words came,” he repeated; “I’m sick with self-contempt, I tell you.”

She set her white-gloved elbow on the window sill and rested her chin in her palm.

“That—­money,” she said with an effort.  “You set—­some—­aside for me.”

“Half,” he nodded calmly.

“Why?”

He was silent.

“Why?  I did not ask for it?  There was nothing in the—­the legal proceedings to lead you to believe that I desired it; was there?”

“No.”

“Well, then,” her breath came unsteadily, “what was there in me to make you think I would accept it?”

He did not reply.

“Answer me.  This is the time to answer me.”

“The answer is simple enough,” he said in a low voice.  “Together we had made a failure of partnership.  When that partnership was dissolved, there remained the joint capital to be divided.  And I divided it.  Why not?”

“That capital was yours in the beginning; not mine.  What I had of my own you never controlled; and I took it with me when I went.”

“It was very little,” he said.

“What of that?  Did that concern you?  Did you think I would have accepted anything from you?  A thousand times I have been on the point of notifying you through attorney that the deposit now standing in my name is at your disposal.”

“Why didn’t you notify me then?” he asked, reddening to the temples.

“Because—­I did not wish to hurt you—­by doing it that way. . . .  And I had not the courage to say it kindly over my own signature.  That is why, Captain Selwyn.”